


Nothing More Appealing

by Miss_M



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Body Image, Established Relationship, F/M, Ficlet, First Time, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-28
Updated: 2013-08-28
Packaged: 2017-12-24 22:34:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/945442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She wants to rise to the top, head her own company or at least her own department. She wants her name spoken with knee-jerk respect. She wants to always feel good in her skin, like her face is worth looking at, like her thigh can be touched and stroked, and still merit regard. She wants to not just want love out of life or have to explain why that is and how it doesn’t make her a freak.</p><p>Brienne moves through her day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing More Appealing

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to focus on modern!Brienne’s inner world. The title is from DJ Tiësto’s “Close to You,” which invaded my brain and inspired this fic. I also borrowed an image from Umberto Eco’s _The Name of the Rose_. I own nothing.

Brienne replies to Jaime’s text, puts away her phone, tries to focus. She enjoys her work, though people rarely believe it – nobody is supposed to enjoy working in an office. Today she finds it difficult, her mind restless, flitting between images and snippets of words, finding purchase nowhere. A cat grooming itself on a street corner, pausing to stare Brienne down as she passed, nearly running late. A perfect pink lotus flower standing tall and proud in a florist’s window. A Patrick O’Brian box set on sale in the bookstore next door. Headlines: heat wave, priceless artwork recovered, war, war, more war.

Brienne wishes, not for the first time, she knew how to make some of this last, lose none of its flavor, none of how it makes her feel light and careless. Wipe the rest of it out of existence, one swipe of a sponge over spilled tea. Too much. Almost makes lingering over any of it not worth her while, her feelings too transitory to grasp or even identify. She will feel different soon enough. She rubs her temples, wishes for more tea, clicks away savagely, work waits for no woman. He texts her again, tells her to bring curry when she comes over. She makes a moue at being thus commanded, lets it go. 

She escapes at lunchtime, goes walking in sunshine just this side of unpleasantly intense. Her freckles will come out like sunspots, but it’s worth it not to have to sit in company while she eats her sandwich, to be alone a bit and gather the day around herself like a cloak before the afternoon meeting. 

Brienne makes her peace with her face, her height, the way people look at her, when she is alone, truly alone. Even the bathroom mirror holds no more power over her, and Internet shopping is a godsend. Only when she steps outside, the bus, the street, the office, the club, around people who really should not throw stones as well as those who can allow themselves such casual cruelty, that’s when equanimity deserts her. She walks like a galleon trailing looks in her wake. Like an army with unfurled banners. Sometimes she imagines she is walking on the bottom of the sea and can hear nothing, air bubbles caressing her skin. 

The meeting is long and boring, but she pays attention, takes notes, sits up to her full height, not the least bit awkward. She wants to rise to the top, head her own company or at least her own department. She wants her name spoken with knee-jerk respect. She wants to always feel good in her skin, like her face is worth looking at, like her thigh can be touched and stroked, and still merit regard. She wants to not just want love out of life or have to explain why that is and how it doesn’t make her a freak.

Brienne likes some of her colleagues well enough, learned early on others are assholes. Some of the nice ones invite her to go get a drink after work, so she accepts. The barmaid is pretty and petite, and the man who sits in the cubicle next to Brienne’s calls her a pocket Venus. Brienne tells herself it’s not about her, that she doesn’t mind while the men at her table look at the barmaid like she is in a display case, feels a wash of relief when the conversation does not shift to sex and dates, loops safely back to quarterly reports and rumors of downsizing. There is a fine line between shy and private, and Brienne redraws it in the sand again and again. 

She met Jaime Lannister in a place like this. Friends had taken him out to distract him from his injury. Brienne was undone by his cutting humor. It took her a while to realize he spoke that way to everyone, and a longer while for him to apologize, tell her he thought her face was interesting. Picasso’s portraits of women are _interesting_. She hates the ambiguity of the word, how it can be used to cut someone without consequence, reminds herself it’s a compliment. It’s a pink lotus on a long, strong stem. It’s sunlight on blue water. 

He can afford not to go to work when he doesn’t feel like it, can hide himself in his lavish home as much as he wants. Prefers her to come to him, says it’s because there’s no room for both of them in her shoebox of a place. She understands the desire to outrun everything, the reluctance to let people see you as you are, though she can’t quite repress the thought that a face like his might take away some of the sting of a missing limb. Remembers their first time, on his couch which wouldn’t fit in her sitting room, how she’d kicked her jeans and underwear aside, watched his eyes go up and up her legs, and linger. Scowled, terrified and exposed, said grown women had hair _there_ , and if he wanted her to look like something out of a magazine she could just leave. He’d grinned, reached for her, told her he was a cripple, not an idiot. Her hand in his, she’d straddled him, careful, hips rolling, was rewarded by his Adam’s apple bobbing, his voice gone rough and clipped. 

They’re on that couch again, the television muted, the smell of takeaway a miasma on the air. Jaime learned to be defensive in his father’s house, falls back on it now. He is always joking about how well his physical therapy is going, how dexterous he’s becoming with his left hand, words like armor and sharp blades drawn. Brienne tries not to let her whole body shudder, tries to breathe deeply, closes her eyes as she focuses on his fingers and her flesh, the vistas opening up inside her while his lips ghost over her neck, teeth nipping, marks that will draw sneering eyes tomorrow. 

_I love you_ , she says in her head, again and again. Wishes more than anything this were enough, that she’d never wish for anything else.


End file.
